— urbantick

The future is probaby the topic of the month here. Not only on the blog but deeper. We started the last week already with a vision of the future, so it goes in the tradition to continue on this.

Was the ‘We are the Future’ a more social one, this one here is material based. Its all about glass. Well this is not new, have we already had this back in the nineties, the big boom in the glass industry with new products and a new acceptance in architecture. Glass and with it light was desired in single family homes, but in housing in general.

This new vision takes on the consumer electronic industry and combines it with the built environment. This combination functions via the material, glass as the omni present element. As the hero of the story wakes up the glass turns from dark to transparent and only then he steps up to the massive tv screen, to check the latest news, actually he looks at the traffic camera, presumably on his way to work. A classic, his wife (or is it partner in this case?) is still in bed and he goes into the kitchen makes breakfast. Note the large red pepper he takes out of the fridge, what sort of breakfast is he gona cook? Also keep an eye on the pan, at some point it looks like a soup. Anyway, the story takes an interesting twist starting with the two girls, his daughters (or her daughters) an one of them carrying the pink football boots. This is the hint that in this commercial the producers have worked very hard on the role models. Just after that, and the video call to gran, actually this reminds definitely of the new iPad clip currently playing on apple.com, the wife, partner, whatever enters the kitchen and waves good by, she is off to work. She takes the car, she is navigate the traffic, actually the car does and communicated it via some glass panel (sort of transparent Knight Rider). So things are slightly different, before everything falls back into place, she is working in fashion, guess an generally aceptable profession for females.

This has now brought us slightly off track from the actual vision. Even though these social role models are an important part and on the way we have touch up on a series of other ones. In parallel there are some hints and references to earlier attempts at at the same technology implementation. There is the iPhone echoing through most of the interactions, but there is aso the windows table, the surface project.

As pointed out on Archidose two of them are ‘An Eco-House for the Future‘ by Dillier Scofidio and the Kramlich Residence and Media Collection (1997) by Herzog and de Meuron. Maybe in terms of the setting we could even get further back into the sixties and quote Superstudio, but the spatial interaction combination is definitely related to a whole bunch of science-fiction movies such as Blade Runner with the large billboards.

Is it a sort of back to the future thing? As archidose puts it: “Just because we can make something doesn’t mean it should infiltrate our lives.” In this context maybe it is a fun because it coud be a dream come true, but not quite yet, still dreaming and this could turn into a nightmare.

Note at the end, he is waiting in bed for her to finish watching some astronomy documentation in HD 3D with the girls. He is reading glass obviously as she turns the glass of the window dark and switches off the lights. And the roles are reversed, he sleeps in the front and she is at the back. Not into routines and habits this couple, everything very flexible and spontaneous representing the ultimate freedom and independence. However, the overall tone of the clip transports a rather different tone, everything is highly connected, organised and clean – routine pure.

Via Archidose